Sterile sampling bags are used to collect, contain and carry a variety of sample materials that are pertinent to the agro-food, pharmaceutical, medical and environmental industries. These industries are all subject to various regulatory bodies, such as the FDA in the United States of America, Health Canada, HCAPP, etc. These regulators ensure that all products intended for consumption or interaction with the general public (either directly, such as food products, or indirectly, such as chemical fertilizers), meet scientific and measured standards that confirm their safety.
In order for a sampling bag to be viable for these industries, the following specifications should be met:                made from virgin materials;        does not, in any way, interfere with the integrity of the substance being tested;        does not leach any altering chemicals, such as cadmium, mercury, lead, etc., into the substance it is carrying;        sterile (therefore harbors no fungus, mold, aerobic or anaerobic bacteria);        the producer provides a sterility certificate and ensure production lot number traceability for the entire shelf life of the sampling bag;        when used for DNA detection, must be R-Nase, D-Nase and pyrogen free;        physically viable: not porous, able to contain a specific range of PH and acidity levels;        typical shelf life of 3 years minimum, under ambient storage conditions, before use; and        sufficiently elastic and of low tear propensity to accommodate the pressures of a laboratory homogenizer.        
With respect to the sterility requirement, sampling bags can have a tear-off strip that closes the mouth of the bag until the bag is ready to be used. Such a bag is disclosed, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,564,829 issued on Oct. 15, 1996 to Lafond, wherein a disposable sterile plastic bag B is proposed for holding samples in blenders 30 during the mixing thereof. The plastic bag B comprises a two-ply sheet flexible material 8 integrally joined at opposed side edges 12 thereof and joined at the upper and lower ends thereof respectively by upper and lower heat seals 16 and 18 with a sealed sample receiving chamber being defined between the two plastic sheets 8 inwardly of the bag's side edges 12 and upper and lower seals 16 and 18. Inwardly of the upper seal 16, a tear off line 20 is punctured transversally across the two sheets 8 and parallelly to and lower than the upper seal 16 thereby forming a detachable strip 24 outwardly of the tear off line 20. The upper heat seal 16 extends substantially parallelly between the tear off line 20 and an upper edge 26 of the bag B. When the sample is ready to be introduced in the bag B, the strip 24 is removed from the bag B by pulling it so as to cause rupture of the two sheets 8 at the tear off line 20, with the so removed strip 24 carrying thereon the upper seal 16 thereby proving an open end or mouth 22 to the bag B. The bag's chamber is thus sterile when the sample is introduced therein and the bag B and its contents can then be inserted in the blender 30. The bag's sterility does not depend on how the bag B is packaged or on the integrity of the packaging's seal as the bag B is itself sterile until the strip 24 is removed therefrom, that is typically until the bag B is ready to be used.
Such bags are packaged as individual units, the bags being stacked within a box. The user thus grasps the top bag located in the box, removes the tear off strip from the bag and then inserts the sample or the like in the bag. To remove the tear off strip from the bag, the user required the use of both his/her hands, with one hand holding the bag below the tear off strip while the other hand holds the strip and tears it off the remainder of the bag. Therefore, the user cannot hold the sample while he/she is tearing off the strip from the bag.
Therefore, there is a need for a new way of dispensing sterile bags, which is convenient to the user that must insert samples in such sterile bags.